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Monthly Goals: Having a Plan

So, January, on the whole, did not go quite as planned. I was doing fine with my office cleaning for a lot of the month, and while I don’t think it’s possible for me to have a clean desk every day (too many projects!) I was at least trying to clean up at the end of the week.

Then I got busy with work and non-work, the girl was sick, I had other things I needed to do, the office exploded a little bit and then got worse when we got the girl a new art table that required pulling a bunch of stuff out of her playroom that went, you guessed it, right into my office.

So I’m not that much better off than when I started. But I’m motivated to clear out the girl’s stuff and mine, and will continue to work on that in the days and weeks to come.

February’s Goal

When I’m planning well, I need lots of paper and pens.

So what’s on tap for February?

I really want to do more planning and have a clear vision for the month and beyond whenever possible. The only way to plan ahead is having a plan, after all.

The daily creative challenge requires me to know what’s coming, because some things I just have to make ahead, and I want to do more batch crafting in the future so I can also write ahead a little bit.

Batching, in fact, may be the real goal. Knowing what’s coming enough in advance that I can work on things in chunks, whether that’s crafting or writing up the creative challenges, doing a month’s worth of giveaways on one of my blogs, writing newsletters for another site weeks in advance.

When you can really focus in on a task and repeat it over and over, it gets faster and easier. If those things I know are always coming every week could take up less time, that would free me up for more making, more cleaning, more writing, whatever.

My big goal for the month is to be organized enough and to work ahead enough to not have to work on Sunday nights after the girl goes to bed. That’s usually my time for rushing through a few things that need to be done before Monday, but I’d much rather it be open time, when I could work, or not, or do a special project, or just read all evening.

So getting clear on my schedule, I hope, will also allow me to get more things done in my regular working time and free up some time I’d rather not have to be working.

Goals Link Up

How about you? Are you a blogger with a monthly goal? Write about it and link up here, and check out how everyone else is doing in 2016 so far.